Why I edit station articles

I do a lot of editing on Wikipedia. A whole lot of editing - to the tune of 3500+ edits, plus 5300 more on Commons. Although I do a variety of work on there, most of my edits - particularly large, content-adding ones - are on articles about train stations. Most are about Boston's subway and commuter rail systems, though I do others when interested.

You probably don't understand why. I mean, of all the things to focus on, why train stations? With the exception of the big downtown ones, no one cares much about them. They're often just bare concrete platforms.

A few minutes ago, I showed my girlfriend what the Lawrence station article looked like before and after I edited it. Her response regarding the old version: "It's so boring."

My reply was this:

Yeah.

And I hate that.

I mean, the mass-produced articles aren't horrible. They're better than nothing, most have pictures (often thanks to me...) and they've got the basic info.

But every station has a history.

Often, there was - or is - a beautiful old depot.

Sometimes, there are remains hidden in the bushes, or down the line.

Every station has a story, and I am the electronic bard.

That's why I do it - it's always the history. Even new stations have a history - a former station on the same site, or the struggle to get a station at all. I aim to collect those stories, to tell them for the world to hear.

Weird Error with Picasa (Solved)

Recently, I've been having a weird problem with Picasa. Sometimes, after modifying an image, Picasa would refuse to save it. It claimed a "disk error" that might mean the disk was full or read-only. Well, that's not likely. I have 349 GB of open, writable space on my hard drive.

So I did some Google searching, and it appears that there are at least 6 different things that can cause the problem. A lingering 'export to' address pointing to a now-disconnected external disk can be the issue, as can extremely large (greater than 10,000 x 10,000 pixels) images. But none were causing mine.

Then I found this discussion on the GIMP forums, where "acmespaceship" found the answer. The new Export function in GIMP 2.6 is normally set to add XMP metadata. For some reason, Picasa doesn't play nicely with this XMP data.

So, the solution: when exporting, click the (+) button to see advanced options, and uncheck "Save XMP data". Picasa will stop complaining.

MBTA lost-and-found

So, I lost my room key on Saturday. It happened to be when I was bringing a friend to Logan Airport - so that key could be anywhere at Kenmore station, on a Green Line car, at Government Center, on a Blue Line car, at Airport Station, on a Massport shuttle bus, at Logan, on a Silver Line bus, at South Station, on a Red Line car, at Park Street Station, or on a second Green Line car.

So I, of course, tried to contact lost-and-found. Logan's lost-and-found is run by the state police and is highly efficient. There's an online form to use and you can view a list of items on their website.

The MBTA is not so helpful. The main number given on the website - (617) 222-3200 - just goes to their phone directory with no convenient lost-and-found option. The South Station number goes to an answering machine even during business hours.

What are useful are the individual line numbers. Each colored line maintains its own lost-and-found, and they are manned and have helpful operators. But the numbers are not publicly available! You have to get them from an attendant at a manned station like Park Street, Airport, or Kenmore.

For your convenience, here are the numbers:
Blue: (617) 222-5533
Orange: (617) 222-5403
Green: (617) 222-5220 (also 617-222-6070 at Riverside)
Red: 617-222-5099 (formerly -5231 and -6494)
Silver: (617) 222-2432


The commuter rail and ferries have their own numbers which can be found here.

MassDOT and image reuse

I recently added a link on my blogroll: "Commonwealth Conversations", the official transportation blog of MassDOT. As well as highway projects, MassDOT is in charge of projects like South Coast Rail that involve new passenger rail or transit service, so much of the content is about such projects. They also post about MBTA projects.

One such post is today's, which announces approvals for the new Assembly Square station on the Orange Line and the rebuild of Orient Heights on the Blue Line. I am very glad to see both projects advancing.

There is one image in the post: a shot of the front of Orient Heights station. I recognized it immediately, because I just moved it to Wikimedia Commons yesterday.

It is originally from Flickr, posted here. I moved it to Wikimedia Commons with using a web interface because the photo is available under a free-use Creative Commons licence. This means that it is eligible to be used freely on Wikipedia and other sites as long as the terms of the licence are met.

In this case, it's a CC-BY-SA 2.0 licence. The BY term means that attribution is required: free reuse is only allowed if the author is properly credited. The SA term requires sharealike: any modification of the file must be licenced by the reuser under a similar free licence.

Use on Wikipedia meets those terms: clicking on the file takes you to a description page that credits the author, and Wikipedia itself is released under a free Creative Commons licence.

But MassDOT's use does not meet the terms. Both the Flickr version and the Wikimedia Commons reuse require attribution and sharealike. MassDOT's blog does not mention that the photograph was taken by Scott Lapierre, or provide a link to the Flickr or Wikimedia page, and it fails to release the resized version under a free licence. It's an easy and very common mistake to make, and one I've made myself in the past; I only personally became responsible about it after I started uploading files to Commons. Hopefully MassDOT, as a state agency, can set an example with correct attribution of free-use photos.

I am a Feminist

I am a feminist, and I am a man. I do not see this as a contradiction. I am a man because that is who I am; I did not choose to be a man. I am a feminist because I chose to be a feminist, because I believe in the apparently radical idea that women are people. People, just people, exactly as men are people.

Some people tell me this is a contradiction. They say that a man cannot be a feminist, because feminism is about women, and I am not a woman. Or they say that it is silly to be a feminist, because I am not a woman, and giving women equality will not give me anything. I find this to be ridiculous: should I not believe in the equality of black people because I am not black, or not fight for gay people to marry simply because I am not gay?

I believe that equality is necessary on its own merits, that no person should be denied an equal chance because of something as trivial as because they happen to be female. I do not need to justify its benefit to me, because having a fair society is worth anything I can do. But even the silly arguments make me think. What does feminism bring to me? Can it be justified on a personal level, in addition to a global level? It maybe is not important that it can – but it can absolutely be justified on any level. I am a feminist because I think it is good, but I am also a feminist because it is good for me.

I am a feminist, because when I walk into my job, I will have the very best possible coworkers. They will have been chosen at every level for their ability and creativity, their rationality and brilliance. There will be women there, because maybe they will not have been told at five and ten and fifteen and eighteen and twenty-two that women don’t become engineers, that maybe they should become a nurse of a teacher instead, because that’s what women do. There will be women sitting in the fancy chairs, because we will have purged from our collective memory banks the idea that only men can make decisions.

I am a feminist, because I will have sex with a woman, and I will know that we are having sex because we want to have sex with each other. It will be good sex, because she will have been taught that her body is good and she can enjoy it, and that sex is good and she can enjoy it too. I will not worry that she would rather be having sex with a woman, or with no one, or with someone else entirely – because she will not feel a pressure to ignore her feelings and have sex with a man – and I will know that we are having sex because she happens to want sex. She will not feel shamed by society for having sex, even if she has sex with other people too, or if she gets birth control so that she does not have to have a baby.

I am a feminist, because I will watch movies, and I will watch television, and I will watch strong female characters. Except I will not even think of this, because strong female characters will be so normal I will not notice them, because they will not be an anomaly any more. I will watch these women have jobs and hobbies and talk to each other about things besides men, because that is how women act in real life. 

I am a feminist, because I will hold doors for people. I will not worry about being expected to open doors for women simply because they are women, and I will not worry about insulting a woman’s strength by opening a door for her. I will open doors for people because it is basic human kindness, and I will be able to open doors for all people.

A note: this was originally written about 2:30 in the morning a few nights back. It's an amalgam of several nights of thought. It's written in a bit of an idiosyncratic style, I realize, and I refuse to have it any other way.

(Originally posted by me at Walking Boston.

Dear Google Chrome dictionary

Heterosexist and heterosexism are words. Transphobia and transphobic are also words. Thye're quite important words when we're talking about equality. Learn them, and don't try to tell me that they're not words.

Worst Patron I've Ever Seen

The library I work at is pretty slow; we get anything from 2 patrons an hour (Tuesday nights) to 20 (weekday mornings during summer reading, and Saturdays). Most of our patrons are friendly or at worst indifferent (and I don't work directly with most of them; I put away books).

The worst ones are definitely the parents of small children that ignore their children. I understand that they want to check out books or browse the internet. But they are still parents, and they can't arbitrarily discard their parental duties.

A 2-year-old will not sit calmly and solve a puzzle. A 2-year-old will mess up the puzzle, walk around, and mess up the neatly arranged books. A 2-year-old cannot be left unsupervised.

Some 5-year-olds will solve a puzzle, or play with the blocks, or even read a book without supervision. If their parent knows they will, then that's okay. But many 5-year-olds are not that mature, and they need a constant eye on them.

One such child was in today. He was energetic and almost completely unresponsive to anyone speaking to him; he may be on the autism spectrum. I first found him in the adult fiction section, where he was busying himself removing books to make a hole for his head. When he bored of that, he tried to climb the shelves. His mother, at this point, was up at the front desk unaware of his antics.

I stopped him, replaced the books, and watched him wander off. Within 30 seconds, he'd knocked down a row of kid's books, intentionally. At this point I took his hand and told him he was going up to mommy (who, at this point, was still clueless).

He immediately ran back to the kid's section but didn't knock any more books around, so I went back to work. About two minutes later, I heard a loud thump behind me. The boy had gone up to the mezzanine, taken a large 5-pound book, and managed to throw it over the 4-foot railing. I scooped up the book, went upstairs, and scooped the kid up in one arm. Only when I carried him to his mother did she understand what he'd been doing - and even then she had little to no control over him.

That's the only time I've had to physically restrain someone, and I was only willing to do it because he was putting people in danger. That first book was only fifteen feet from me, and he moved fast. A five-pound book falling from the mezzanine (the rail is fifteen feet above the floor) could easily hurt someone, like the patron sitting at a computer who could have been right in the path of another book.

Here's so much of what is wrong with the world

(via Pharnygula)

Women STILL earn 25% less than men, for the same educational level. In fact, women earn the same as a male with about 2 years less education - and those figures are for women who work full-time year-round.

A man without a high school diploma earns the same as a woman with one.
A man with a high school diploma earns the same as a woman with an associate's degree.
A man with an associate's degree earns the same as a woman with a bachelor's degree.
A man with a bachelor's degree earns the same as a woman with a doctorate.

A man with a master's degree will earn, on average, more than a woman of any educational level.

That's not acceptable. There's no reason to pay someone a quarter less than they deserve, on account of them being female.

Sexism: makes the EGE very, very angry.

College Mail

Unsolicited mail from universities I did not look at: 24 lbs 6 ounces

Mail from universities I had some interest in: 2 lbs, 2 ounces

Mail from universities I applied to but am not attending: 8 lbs 8 ounces

Amount of college mail going in the recycle bin: 35 pounds

(Total mail and received-during-visit stuff from BU: 2.1 pounds)

I like this kid.

Chris Whitehead goes to school near Cambridge, England. He's not a terribly rebellious boy, but he's decided to take a stand. His (apparently public) school's dress code does not allow shorts, even during the hot months of spring and summer. And of course they're not allowed to wear jeans - they must wear "plain black tailored trousers or knee-length skirts without slits". And fitted trousers happen to be about the most miserable thing possible to wear when it's about 70 degrees out. You sweat, they stick, they ride up, and it's just plain uncomfortable - and hard to concentrate.

So, he and other students are justifiably angry over the capricious policy. But young Mr. Whitehead doesn't want to actually break the rules - being uncomfortable is one thing, but getting in trouble is another. So he looks for a loophole, and he finds it. The section of the dress code about trousers and skirts does not specify gender, because that would be discriminatory. But girls can, by society's arbitrary rules change into leg-baring skirts, while boys cannot.

Well, forget those unwritten rules, because Chris Whitehead is wearing a skirt. Knee-length black skirt, borrowed from his sister. He's a bit more comfortable, and the administration is taking notice (hopefully) that students are dissatisfied.

The astute reader will notice I did not mention his age. He's in Year Eight - twelve years old. That's roughly eighth grade here in the US, and it happens to be middle school. Middle schoolers are sadists. A large number are bullies, including those that are well-adjusted before and after. Any boy showing signs of being gay/bisexual or effeminate, or otherwise not conforming to the heterosexual hyper-masculine paradigm is a ripe target. This is a brave young man.

Chris Whitehead is standing up to authority, and he's doing so in an excellent way. I am very pleased also to see that his parents are publicly in support of his decision - and so are many of his peers.

Macbeth Essay

Long and frustrating, though it's going well. A practice run for our senior critique / thesis paper, if you will. It's frustrating trying to read literary criticism, but I just have to remind myself that this is the last literature-analysis class I will take. (My only English classes at BU focus on communication in engineering and the writing of scholarly papers).

And, it's not all bad. I get to use multiple layers of nested parentheses (which are lots of fun (especially when you get to 2 and 3 interweaving layers)); semicolons are also in abundance in my writing. And Shakespeare does have neat things to say sometimes; who could remain unmoved by Lady Macbeth's command for the spirits to “unsex me here, / and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty” (1.5.48-50).
 

Back to work...

Sensible Amtrak Schedules

One thing has always bugged me about Amtrak's Northeast Regional services on the Northeast Corridor: they're not regular. You can't say "oh, I'll take the three-o'clock train" without consulting a schedule first, because they don't operate on a very logical schedule.

For example, these are the weekday departures from Washington DC, heading to Boston. Regional trains on the left, Acela Express on the right:
0315    0500
0450    0700
0725    0900
0840    1000
1025    1200
1205    1300
1405    1400
1502    1500
1605    1600
2200

And southbound departures from Boston:

0615    0510
0815    0605
0935    0715
1103    0910
1340    1113
1520    1215
1735    1310
1848    1515
2130    1630
               1720

There's no pattern to any of the Regional departures; they're not even concentrated at a few minutes past the hour like the southbound Acelas are.

All of the services should be like the northbound Acelas: almost hourly, and always at exactly the same interval past the hour. This should be the ideal northbound schedule:


0330    0500
0530    0700
0730    0900
0830    1000
1030    1200
1230    1300
1430    1400
1530    1500
1630    1600
2130

Put the Regionals on the half-hour, and Acelas on the hour. The British (who always know how to run a railway) do it that way. For example, this is what the services out of King's Cross in London look like:

xx:00, to Edinburgh Waverley (extended on alternate hours to Glasgow Central).
xx:10, to Leeds.
xx:30, to Newcastle (with some services extended into Scotland).
xx:35, to Leeds.

It's fantastically simple. You know the 12:00 is to Edinburgh and the 12:30 to Newcastle, because it's like that every hour. It's simple, easy to remember, and convenient. And that's what brings in transit riders.

Read the Picture.

What a Day

We got two inches of snow last night. Thick heavy snow, a bit icy.

It took me ten minutes to scrape off enough of my car to drive this morning. Nasty ice. I broke both the windshield wipers (one seriously, one minorly) trying to extricate them.

Roads were bad. Real bad; worst I've ever driven. Slushy and wet, and slippery.

There were at least two accidents in Ledyard this morning. One was a car that flipped over; I don't know the details. The other I saw the aftermath of - on a big wide curve in the road, there were a few emergency vehicles, and taillights. A car had gone off the road and into an eight-foot ditch. Apparently a fellow senior.

Last I heard was no one seriously hurt. Which is good. But those accidents shouldn't happen at all.

But did we get a delay in school opening? Nope.

In which I'm proved wrong

Last year, in American Literature (11th grade English), I thought there was nothing more obtuse and ridiculous than Puritan writings. Denser than Dickens and crazier than Timecube.

I was wrong. Oh boy, was I wrong. Those wacky Puritans had nothing on medieval writers. Geoffrey Chaucer is downright ridiculous; never before or sense has anyone said so little in so many fancy words. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is not much better.

Blah.

Fred Goodwin is a banker

Fred Goodwin is a banker.

Fred Goodwin is a banker. But you can't say that on British television.

Fred Goodwin is a banker. He essentially singlehandedly ran the Royal Bank of Scotland into the ground. He spent lavishly as head of the bank. He was one of the people who causes the near-collapse of the British economy. Then he got a lot of bonuses for leaving.

Fred Goodwin is a banker. And he has some powerful friends. Friends in Parliament, who managed to get an injunction to prevent the press from talking about him, or ever calling him a banker.

Fred Goodwin is a banker. His friends didn't just manage to get him an injunction. They got him a super-injunction. Which means the press can't even talk about it. It was only revealed when an MP, speaking under parliamentary privilege, revealed the super-injunction.

Fred Goodwin is a banker. And I'm telling you here, because they can't tell you in Britain.

100th International Women's Day

Today is the 100th International Women's Day. Which, is very interesting in its own right, and certainly a good reason to look around and think about equality.

It's also rather depressing to realize that it's still needed. This day, designed to draw attention to gender-based inequality, has been around for a century. Last August was the 90th anniversary of women gaining the vote in what for most of those 90 years has been the world's most powerful country. And yet women do 60% of the world's work to earn just 10% of the pay, and own 1% of the property. Those are depressing numbers.

I'd also like to point you towards ways you can make a difference, and I'd like for you to watch this excellent video featuring Judith Dench and Daniel Craig (both of James Bond fame):


(video from Phil Plait)

Finally, I'd like to leave you with this quote from a thoroughly fantastic speech given by Joss Whedon (writer and director of Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse):

So, why do you write these strong women characters?

Because equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity, we need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and women who’s confronted with it. We need equality, kinda now.

So, why do you write these strong female characters?

Because you’re still asking me that question.

Not such a big fan of wind either

After all the rain yesterday, it cleared up today. Unfortunately, it also dropped to the low forties, and the winds were high all day. No chance to get outside to take some steel wool to the primer on the Nell or the MLAS.

Dear March: Forget the lion. I want the stinking lamb.

Grrr... Rain...

I dislike rain. Strongly dislike it.

If there was not a rainstorm encompassing most of New England, then I would have gotten to go skiing today. I have not gotten to ski yet this season due to other conflicts, and time is running out.

If there was not rain today, then I would have been able to do a better job priming the MLAS. Today was the first day in a while that it got over 50 when I actually had time to prime the rocket. I primed most of it today, but I had to move it to dry in the shed before the rain got too heavy. Unfortunately, the shed has a window open to prevent the primer from making it smell horrible, so the primer likely didn't dry correctly due to the humidity. I won't know till I look tomorrow.

If there was not rain today, I would be in a better mood.

Press Release

Hartford -

Governor Malloy announced at a press conference today that he would be signing CT House bill 7669 - the Emergency Precipitation Control Act of 2011. "The bill was result of an unprecedented bipartisan effort, the highly productive culmination of a great deal of stress over this winter weather," the governor said outside the state house.

According to an anonymous state senator, "This was a plan borne of desperation. The state of Connecticut is running out of money, our infrastructure is failing, and we were running out of time." The historic snowfalls - more than 70 inches at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, and over 100 inches in some northwestern regions of the state - are set to bankrupt a number of municipalities by snowplow bills alone. Most towns declined to spend money for cleanup of this morning's 2" snowfall.

The extreme temperature swings also have created an unusually high number of large potholes; we were unable to confirm initial reports that gold has been discovered in several gigantic potholes on state highways in Manchester. The snow has damaged a number of the aging fleet of Metro-North railcars; branch service has been temporarily replaced by buses, and until the new M-8 railcars enter service, the MTA and CDOT are offering a discounted fare for all passengers willing to help push "up that really big hill in Norwalk."

The language of the bill is complex, but it boils down to this: all non-liquid precipitation entering the state of Connecticut is subject to immediate arrest, deportation, or liquidization - without charges filed. Although harsh, state lawmakers agreed that the penalties were fair punishment for non-sentient forms of matter.

Malloy declined to elaborate on enforcement of the bill, but our anonymous senator informed us that both state and local police are "100 percent on board." Additional snowplows and dump trucks are ready to be rented  at the first sign of threatening weather. Rumors of mass state police buying of powerful hair dryers and 500-foot extension cords remained unconfirmed at press time.

All but one state lawmaker voted for the bill. The lone dissenter was Mary Subington, representing Hartville, a tiny hamlet northwest of Thompsonville. "One quarter of our village's visitors are here to see the snow," she said, "and we're not going to lose them just because a few towns need a better snowplow." When pressed during a call to her office, Ms. Subington admitted that the other three visitors were travelers who got lost looking for Hartford.